Israel incensed pro-Palestinian film to show at UN

'Miral' to be premiered in main hall of UN General Assembly; film "laden with instances of Israeli cruelty to Palestinians."

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UN General Assembly 311.
(photo credit:ASSOCIATED PRESS)

NEW YORK – The feature film Miral, a “relentlessly” pro-Palestinian and anti-
Israel story, will be premiered on Monday night in the main hall of the UN
General Assembly, in what is believed to be the first feature film premiere to
be held there.

The film, directed by American Julian Schnabel, is an
adaptation of his Haifa-born girlfriend Rula Jebreal’s 2004 novel about a
Palestinian orphan growing up amid ethnic hatred and violence, mainly
perpetrated by Israeli authorities.

“I felt it was my responsibility to
[turn] Rula’s book into a film,” Schnabel told reporters in Venice in September,
according to the New York Post. “And I thought that I would have something –
coming from my background as an American Jewish person whose mother was the
president of Hadassah in 1948 – I figured I was a pretty good person to tell the
other side.”

A member of the Israeli delegation to the UN who had seen
the film told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that the film is
“scandalous.”

“There’s no historic context, not at all, nothing,” the
diplomat said, noting that the film was laden with instances of Israeli cruelty
to Palestinians. “You can see us bombing a house in the film, but you don’t see
why – maybe this was the house of a suicide bomber that killed 30 Israelis. We
don’t know.”

Sources said that invitations were sent out on Thursday
afternoon for the Monday night screening. Members of the Israeli delegation said
the decision to screen a feature film in the General Assembly hall – especially
such a dramatically pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli film – was a “horrible”
one.

The decision seems to have been made unilaterally by Switzerland’s
Joseph Deiss, the General Assembly’s president.

Asked whether the showing
would be particularly inappropriate following the slayings in Itamar on Friday
night, UN spokesperson Jean- Victor Nkolo told the Post Sunday that Deiss
condemns “in the strongest possible terms the murder of the Israeli family in
the West Bank.”

However, Nkolo said, it is the UN’s hope that the film
“will show the state of children in conflict.”

Nkolo said Deiss had seen
the film and thought it would be “conducive to a discussion of children in
conflict.”

Nkolo said he believes other films have been shown in the
General Assembly hall, recalling one on child soldiers in Africa. He did not
know if a nondocumentary feature film had ever premiered there.

On Friday
morning, Israel’s delegation to the UN sent a letter of complaint to Deiss,
protesting his decision to host the US premiere of Miral.

In the letter,
Israel’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Haim Waxman wrote, “We find
it very troubling that the UN has chosen to feature this film in the GA Hall. We
are not aware of any other films with such contentious political content that
have received this kind of endorsement from the president of the GA.”

The
event, according to the Israeli delegation, “will mark a rare occasion in which
the UN’s GA Hall is used for a movie premiere. This is clearly a politicized
decision of the UN, one that shows poor judgment and a lack of
evenhandedness.”

According to members of the Israeli delegation, various
offices at the UN denied having any knowledge of the event beforehand, including
the office of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. His office did not respond to the
Post’s request for comment.

Waxman said that Deiss, as president of the
General Assembly, in some circumstances is independent and therefore has the
prerogative to make decisions such as these.

“But the hall of the General
Assembly is not his own property,” Waxman continued.

“This is the main
hall of the global community and belongs to the countries of the world. Anything
that happens there has to be decided with great care. We find ourselves arguing
about commas here and there on every document – so how can this screening
happen?” Waxman said members of the Israeli delegation met with Deiss staffers
on Friday.

“We gave them a very strong piece of our mind on why we think
it’s completely out of place, why this is almost bizarre and a very strange
decision [that] the only time they’re sending a political movie [is] when it
deals with us,” Waxman told the Post.

In his letter to Deiss, Waxman
stressed that Israel fully supports and respects freedom of speech and artistic
freedom.

“As you are well aware, Israel enjoys a vibrant civil society
and a film industry that produces and screens films that are sometimes highly
self-critical and controversial,” Waxman wrote.

However, he went on, the
UN has a “clear duty to carefully select all programs that are hosted on its
premises in order to maintain a spirit of impartiality.”

He added, “The
screening of Miral constitutes an inappropriate use of the hall of the GA, which
already deals with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict excessively and
obsessively.”

American Jewish Committee executive director David Harris
wrote a letter to Deiss on Friday reiterating this point, stating that showing
such a film in the UN General Assembly hall “will only serve to reinforce the
already widespread view that Israel simply cannot expect fair treatment in the
UN.”

Harris expressed concern that “the president of the General Assembly
would wish to associate himself – and the prestige of his office – with such a
blatantly onesided event,” and, like the Israelis, urged Deiss to reconsider his
decision.

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